Our favorite Belgian martial artist has turned 64 years old. Jean-Claude Van Damme became a true icon of karate movies, boys and men wanted to be fighters like him, while our loved ones sometimes secretly dreamed of such a handsome, muscular giant. Whether it's asparagus or hundreds of terrorists, Van Damme has proven in nearly 80 films that he is the European Chuck Norris, only in a flashier version. The actor looks good even above the age of 60, as can be seen in his recent pictures.
What is the secret of Jean-Claude Van Damme?
By his own admission, he is the Fred Astaire of karate. Although it's annoying that the muscular Belgian giant would compare himself to a dancing comedian, the truth is that just as Astaire had everyone sitting up in movie theaters with his tap dancing in the 1940s and 1950s, Jean-Claude Van Damme pulled it off. in front of the screen with his kicks and 360 degree spin kicks. He never became a star like, for example, Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger, because instead of cinema, his films invaded store shelves and on television screens. Just think of the global success of Kickboxer, Double Dynamite, or later, the films Perfect Soldier and Perfect Target. However, his salary was not far from that of the above-mentioned actors, and in the mid-1990s he collected $8-10 million for a movie, so he was among the highest-paid actors of the decade.
With the help of Chuck Norris, he struggled with mental illness
Jean-Claude Van Damme In America, he first worked as a farmer, a pizza delivery boy, a taxi driver, and then quite by chance as a bouncer in one of Chuck Norris's bars. However, years later, they became good and Norris invited him to play a minor role in the film Missing in Battle. From there, it was a straight path to stardom, but in the late 1990s, he worked less and less. She has so far gone through four divorces due to her alleged difficult nature. The actor visited several rehabilitation centers and clinics due to his unrealistic mood swings, where it turned out that he, like Sandor Nozali, suffers from bipolar disorder. Since then, Van Damme has been able to maintain balance in his life with the help of medications, which had an unexpected result: after their divorce in 1992, his third wife, Gladys Portugues, returned to him with their two children together and they married again in 1999. . They were inseparable for 25 years, but for this the actor had to find a balance in his life. He withdrew from the world of Hollywood, taking on fewer duties, so there was less chance of his illness taking over.
